Wednesday, 04 November 2026
74 stories filed.
GSMA warns of growing risks to mobile networks from extreme weather
Mobile comms body wants a joined-up approach from governments and regulators to mitigate downtime
Qwen 3.8 27B on my laptop can interpret model weights, too
Article URL: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Nov/3/qwen-can-interpret-model-weights/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50355251 Points: 192 # Comments: 53
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Improved asteroid deflection model runs faster, reveals more doomsday worries
“We expected aim to matter ... What surprised us was how much,' says Sandia physicist Nathan Moore
Postman silently auto-installs AI plugins and attempts to share all API data
Article URL: https://github.com/postmanlabs/postman-app-support/issues/14370 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50354960 Points: 495 # Comments: 157
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Google dismantles botnet secretly running on 1.3 million Android TV boxes
Google has cut ties with the company behind the botnet campaign.
This space company is betting its future on a propellant available everywhere
Is that water in your spacecraft, or are you just happy to see the delta-V?
Linux 7.4 Features Steam Frame VR Headset, More AMD Zen 6 Enablement & Initial Apple M4 / A18 Pro Bring-Up
The Linux 7.4 kernel is hopefully going to be this year's Long Term Support (LTS) kernel version and is coming jam-packed with new features and changes.
Password manager mSecure tells users to change passwords, won't say why
Customers left wondering what's been compromised after vendor advises resetting passwords, 2FA and passkeys
UEFI bootkit infected fully patched Windows machines. Is Microsoft to blame?
UEFI bootkit BlackX exploits Microsoft's lack of clarity around Secure Boot protections.
GhostBSD 26.2 takes the fright out of FreeBSD with a friendlier installer
Full-disk encryption joins the toolkit, MATE and Xfce stay while Gershwin sits this one out
Trump wanted to give No Kings no air. Then, Meta suspended its Instagram.
Meta faces pressure to protect No Kings Instagram on election day.
ShinyHunters hit 850k alumni, donors, students, and fam in last year's Harvard University raid
How about them apples? Plenty of personal + donation data leaked by crims, data-sifting breach site claims a year after attack
Study estimates 75% of NFL players who died over 15-year span had CTE
Article URL: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/study-estimates-75-nfl-players-died-15-year-span-may-cte-rcna605975 Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50353335 Points: 161 # Comments: 103
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Kalshi and its co-founders face felony charges for violating Utah gambling laws
Article URL: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/10/trump-admin-sues-utah-to-save-kalshi-from-the-states-total-ban-on-gambling/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50353229 Points: 249 # Comments: 184
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Google will turn off search for schools that reject AI
https://archive.ph/RuwsB https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/products/educatio... Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50353192 Points: 326 # Comments: 266
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
RadeonSI & RADV Now Enabling D16 Support For GFX8 Era GPUs
Thanks to the latest work by Georg Lehmann of Valve's Linux graphics team, the AMD GFX8 generation of GPUs that stretch from GCN Volcanic Islands through Polaris GPUs is still seeing improved Linux support. The latest work to land and benefiting both RadeonSI OpenGL and RADV Vulkan is enabling D16 support...
Mac at Any Scale
Article URL: https://namespace.so/blog/mac-at-any-scale Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50352758 Points: 195 # Comments: 98
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
OpenAI seems to be silently re-enabling model training on Codex chats
My company is pretty paranoid about leaking IP to the frontier labs through prompts, so we've all been diligent about disabling data sharing in Codex/Claude Code/etc. But yesterday my coworkers and I noticed that the setting had been silently reenabled in Codex. None of us knowingly opted back in.
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Pokémon bakeoff reveals best JavaScript frameworks for AI
Sorry React die-hards, Claude prefers lean HTML-first tools over bloated SPAs
EPA throws in the towel on policing air pollution from factory farms
Critics say EPA is effectively abandoning Clean Air Act enforcement at factory farms.
NHS counts Palantir benefits at trusts that say they're not using it
Medact flags 29 disputed entries as ministers weigh £330M deal's future
Fedora 45 Released With Many Leading-Edge Linux Innovations
After challenged by two release delays, Fedora 45 is officially out as the latest six-month update to this leading Linux distribution...
Beyond screens: Mercedes-Benz's new holographic heads-up display
After pioneering the passenger screen, Mercedes has designs on the windshield.
Drax wants to feed Britain's AI habit with £20B datacenter at biomass power station
But first it needs planning permission, government approval and, rather importantly, a customer
Linux Preparing Faster FAT32 Performance In 2027 With Up To 4.06x Improvement
In addition to some significant performance improvements for FAT32 in Linux 7.4, more performance improvements are on the way. For what will likely land in Linux 7.5 is up to a 4.06x improvement demonstrated for this aging file-system...
Virgin Media O2 outlines plans to lay off thousands as revenue falls
Telco expects to deliver cost savings of £800M by 2029, with £300M coming from staff cuts
openSUSE Leap 16.1 Released With Immutable Sever Integration
The openSUSE Leap 16.1 Linux distribution is out today and built from the same sources as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 16.1...
Britain on notice: AI-powered ransomware attacks to arrive by 2028
Cyber agency warns critical infrastructure is a likely target as chief urges bosses to stop doing 'tech on the cheap'
Apple's Mac business is booming, but the memory market has other plans
New CEO John Ternus toasts record sales as soaring RAM costs threaten supplies and squeeze margins
The 'Astra can read and write weights to improve Qwen' post is misleading
Article URL: https://honnibal.dev/blog/astra-read-write-misleading Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50351111 Points: 762 # Comments: 174
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
The Linux Kernel Preparing To Remove The Last Of Its MMX Optimized Code
For what will likely be merged to the Linux 7.5 kernel, the mainline kernel is preparing to drop its last optimization its been carrying for far outdated MMX processors. This affects the likes of Intel Pentium MMX and Pentium II processors running modern software with up-to-date kernels when Linux 7.5 is released in 2027...
Broadcom denied names of cloud providers backing VMware merger challenge
EU court's confidentiality ruling clears a procedural hurdle, not the merits of CISPE's case against Commission approval
Intel Compute Runtime Continues Prepping For GPU D Series, OpenCL LEO for Nova Lake P
Released today was the Intel Compute Runtime 26.40.40196.8 as the newest version of their open-source GPU compute stack for both Windows and Linux systems...
SUSE Laying Off 10% Of Its Workforce Due To AI & Automation
Bavarian-based enterprise Linux distribution vendor SUSE is laying off 10% of its global workforce as a result of AI and automation...
GCC 17 Compiler Merges Support For AVX10V1AUX
Landing today into the GCC 17 compiler codebase is initial support for AVX10V1AUX as the auxillary updates to AVX10.1 that are out of the cross-vendor AI Compute Extensions "ACE" initiative between AMD and Intel...
UK.gov lacks understanding of climate impact, says watchdog
Risks of changing climate and cost of transition to low-carbon energy poorly measured by government departments
Raspberry Pi hikes prices again, barely a month after the last round
Memory crunch pushes 16GB Pi 5 to $385, more than triple its launch price, just a month after the last round of hikes
Final_FINAL_v7.docx is not a version control strategy
EVENT: Join The Register for dinner in London on 24 November and hear, off the record, how your peers are fixing it.
Forget retraining - AI can now tweak another AI's weights
'Weight-Space Programming' fiddles with nerd knobs to boost benchmark scores
Could a modern chess engine on a Pentium have defeated Kasparov in 1996?
Article URL: https://nicholas.carlini.com/writing/2026/algorithmic-improvements-chess.html Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50349276 Points: 351 # Comments: 151
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Nvidia – open-source auto-ontology
Article URL: https://github.com/NVIDIA/auto-ontology Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50348962 Points: 248 # Comments: 116
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Open models can do 90% of agentic work at a twentieth of the cost of a frontier LLM: Gartner
Models are commodities, harnesses are the valuable part
Architect creates open source replacement for VM migration tool VMware has hidden
OpenVDDK is reportedly already being used in production, at scale
Toyota shows off SoC that stores model weights and its OS on integrated memory
Accessing external memory puts the brakes on physical AI, so carmaker has found an economical and speedy shortcut
Intel Brings RPL-M/RPL-P SoundWire To Upstream Linux For Raptor Lake Powered Automobiles
Intel today posted a set of patches for bringing SoundWire support in the upstream Intel AVS driver for Raptor Lake. While Intel SoundWire activities are not new, I was curious to see them focusing on Raptor Lake improvements in 2026 for what will then go into a 2027 Linux kernel version...
AerynOS 2026.11 Released With New Installer Option, Other Improvements
AerynOS 2026.11 was released today along with a lengthy blog post highlighting the recent development work on this original Linux distribution...
"At Home in Space" opens, caps Air and Space Museum renovation
The Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum has all of its "space" back open.
Anthropic's compute tab could top $1T as Q3 revenue nears $17B
Revised IPO filing warns 12x revenue growth is unlikely to continue
Why large dogs age faster than small ones, and other October research highlights
Plus invisible tattoos, medieval skeleton gets an ID, trapping a single antimatter particle, and more.
Third person dies of bird flu since virus started jumping to livestock
The threat is still considered to be low, but the virus continues to spread.
Googling "Zelda" today offers a glimpse of how search worked in 1998
"The flow of time is always cruel."
Most of our measures of a key cognitive process don't agree
A big study with very little beyond negative results still gets published.
Coming in 2027: Apple’s $1,000 home robot for FaceTime and switching on lights
Apple robot backed by CEO John Ternus may have hefty price tag and limited uses.
Claude’s new rules against game cloning won’t stop the AI copying boom
The tsunami of imitators is way bigger than any one model maker can stem.
China publicly discloses plan for a lunar landing within three years
The plan does not include a mission similar to Apollo 8 or Artemis II.
Jailbreaking my car's navigation system just so I can change the time
Article URL: https://blog.nns.ee/2026/11/02/renault-hack/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50339288 Points: 348 # Comments: 123
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
F1 in Mexico City: Yet another Ferrari fiasco, but that’s not all
There was plenty of drama on and off the track for Formula 1 this weekend.
The world has a new plan to save nature, but it still needs the money
A new action plan aims to rescue 2030 nature targets as financing remains inadequate.
Fujifilm to boost tape production 5x as AI fuels archiving demand
Article URL: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/10/fujifilm-to-boost-tape-production-5x-as-ai-fuels-archiving-demand/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50336918 Points: 264 # Comments: 107
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
This $48 e-paper display can be whatever you want it to be
This DIY e-paper display works in two official ecosystems or on your own server.
Radeon RADV Vulkan Driver Adopts An LLM Policy
The Mesa RADV driver that provides Vulkan API support for AMD Radeon GPUs on Linux has adopted its own policy around AI / large language models (LLMs) for code contributions...
FreeRDP 3.33 Released With WebAssembly Support, Huge Influx Of Activity Due To AI
The FreeRDP 3.33 software released today as the newest version of this open-source Microsoft Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) implementation...
KDE Linux Nearing Its Beta Milestone, Now Ships With NTSYNC By Default
KDE developer Nate Graham published his monthly blog post on Sunday to outline the current state of KDE Linux and some of the changes made to this in-house Linux distribution over the course of October. Additionally, KDE Linux is nearing its beta milestone after beinbg in development for over one year as a reference Linux distribution for KDE...
Raspberry Pi 5 16GB Price Rises To $385 USD
Raspberry Pi announced their latest round of price hikes as a result of the RAM shortages and increased pricing continuing to affect the industry...
Katamari Damacy but it's The Met collection
Article URL: https://katamari.vaguespac.es/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50332342 Points: 133 # Comments: 43
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Steam On Linux Just Under 4% For October 2026
Valve just published their Steam Survey results for October and point to a small uptick in Linux gaming use on a relative basis...
Linux 7.4-rc1 Released With Nice Performance Improvements, AMD Ryzen Zen 6 Preparations & AMDGPU HDMI 2.1 Default
Even with Linus Torvalds having been on holiday, Linux 7.4-rc1 is out today on-schedule for capping off the Linux 7.4 merge window...
Kwi Being Developed As New KDE Terminal Emulator With 3x To 35x Performance
A new KDE terminal emulator is in development as a modern alternative to Konsole. Kwi is this new terminal app being built atop the Ghostty library...
The Linux 7.4 Merge Window Is Easily The Largest In Kernel History
After writing this morning with some stats about the size of the Linux 7.4 merge window and the kernel's source tree approaching 42 million lines, I was curious to run some numbers for putting the size of the merge window into perspective against the major kernel releases of the past 15 years. This shows the definite recent uptick due to AI/LLM activity...
OverlayFS Sees Many Fixes Thanks To AI Code Review
Merged this weekend for Linux 7.4 and also marked for back-porting to current stable kernel versions are a number of fixes to the OverlayFS union mount file-system...
Toit v2.0.0
Article URL: https://toit.io/blog/toit-v2-0-0/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50321605 Points: 204 # Comments: 68
Discussion: Hacker News thread →
Seabirds racing home over the ocean can get jet-lagged
A long flight home from feeding grounds messes with birds' internal clocks.
The FDA wants to pull its approval of a drug. It’s not so easy.
The regulator says Tavneos was approved on the basis of manipulated study data. Should patients still have access to it?
Once again, NASA is asking for ideas to rescue Hubble from certain death
The space agency solicited ideas for reboosting Hubble four years ago, but they didn't go anywhere.